Danish Bi Minister has story we can (almost) all relate to

Denmark’s Minister for Higher Education and Science, Tommy Ahlers, has come out as bisexual.

In an interview this week the Venstre MP has talked about how he was for a long time married to a woman, but their relationship broke down in 2012 and for years afterwards he found he was only interested in men.

However over time he found he experienced attraction to women again and he is now again in a relationship with a woman. Having become a government minister in May he had concluded that it was important to come out publicly rather than let rumours mill around about him being secretly gay.

In the interview with Danish language title Euroman he explains, “the truth is that I’ve also realised that I like men and women”.

Many readers will relate to that bisexual experience. Most of us are raised on the assumption of heterosexuality, especially if you grew up in that pre-www age where access to any information about sexuality was scarce and bisexuality was erased even in the limited lesbian and gay information sources like the Pink Paper.

The cliche of bisexuality as a “stopping off point” from straight to gay doesn’t hold true for many people who realised their same-sex attractions and accepted the received wisdom that this meant you must be gay or lesbian really. For a large number of bi people, like Tommy, bisexuality is the identity you find when you realise that you were right that you weren’t straight but everyone else was wrong that this meant you must be gay.